The average agency gets hundreds of buyer enquiries every month. But how many agencies go to the effort of asking whether or not that person already owns a property? The answer is not many.
We have some pretty cool tools here at Aire. We use Big Data techniques to take in a range of data sources to build a more complete profile of the person that is sending you enquiries.
In our initial trials, we have identified 10% of enquiries as being from local property owners. This information is a critical insight in to whether a buyer lead could also be a potential new listing lead or investor lead.
We regularly do mystery shopping of how agents respond to enquiries. While most are reasonably good at responding (the average is 68% within 24 hours), only a minority even try to qualify whether we are also local property owners.
In a perfect world, where agents had unlimited time, they would do a google search of the person enquiring, a search of their existing CRM contacts and a property ownership search.
But who has the time?
A Real World Example
One of our customers had an enquiry on a property from a buyer. The enquiry was your typical “can I get a price guide?” enquiry. We identified that the enquiry came from a property owner that lived 3 doors down from the property that they were enquiring on.
After the initial response was automatically sent by RITA., the agent then followed up within minutes and discovered that the person was enquiring as they were thinking of selling.
The speed of the agent’s response was critical in positioning the agency as the likely agent to get the listing. It showed their service level to buyers was above the competition and they were able to start to build that relationship earlier than anyone else.
The Lesson?
Don’t ignore the hidden opportunities in your buyer enquiries. Make sure you have a process in place to qualify every buyer in terms of property ownership. You never know what opportunities may arise.
